LECTURE: Farran on Property and the Law (2 April 2014)

Professor Sue Farran
(Northumbria School of Law and Advisory Council, Juris Diversitas)
'Are there guerrillas in my garden?
Challenging our understandings about property and the law'

The Board Room, Plassey House, the University of Limerick,
3:30 pm; Wednesday, 2 April 2014

This talk is informed by my experience of researching land and people in the Pacific, especially in the Republic of Vanuatu, where I lived for a number of years. There people describe themselves as being ‘people of place’.  In the west this relationship of people and land is different. It is informed by ideas of property which both inform and shape the laws which govern that relationship.  Guerrilla gardening is just one of several contemporary forms of engagement with land that present challenges to the current laws and perceptions of property. Increasingly people are engaging with land in community with others under informal and formal arrangements and getting ‘earth under their nails’ for purposes other than the investment or commercial value of land. This presentation considers the challenges posed by the people-land relationships engendered through community orchards, woodlands, city farms, backyard gardens, urban permaculture and other initiatives, to our ideas about land, property, ownership, public and private spaces. Indeed these activities prompt us to ask if there is a shift from land as property to land as place?

Professor Sue Farran, PhD (NU); LL.M (Cambridge); LL.M (Natal); LL.B (Natal); B.A. (Hons) (English) (University of South Africa); B.A. (English and Social Anthropology) (Natal, (Durban))   

Sue's teaching career started in South Africa at the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg) while she was an LLM student, and has included posts at the University of the West of England, the University of the South Pacific (in Fiji and Vanuatu) and the University of Dundee. She has also taught at the University of Angers, Lyons III and Stamford College, Kuala Lumpur, a private college in Malaysia.

Sue is an Adjunct Professor at the University of the South Pacific and an Associate at the Centre for Pacific Studies, St Andrews University. She is also an external examiner at Glasgow University, Middlesex University, and has been an external examiner at the University of the South Pacific, the University of Queensland and Southern Cross University, Australia.  She is a reviewer for a number of academic journals including most recently the Commonwealth Law Bulletin, the Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Laws, Melbourne Journal of International Law, Anthropological Review, Ethnology and the Journal of Human Rights

Enquiries to: sean.donlan@ul.ie